Female iPhone Factory Worker Walked 25 Miles to Escape Covid Lockdown in China

tech.hindustantimes.com:

It was Sunday when Dong Wanwan decided to give up her job at the world's largest iPhone factory and walk home.

The 20-year-old had been working for the past three months on the production lines at Foxconn Technology Group's factory in Zhengzhou, one of tens of thousands helping put together Apple Inc. iPhones that would be sent around the globe. It was a coveted job, among the country's best-paid blue-collar gigs.

Then Covid began spreading on the manufacturing campus. The factory went into a “closed loop,” walling off the giant complex from the outside world. Trash piled up in hallways. Food was harder to come by. Many who got infected said they were forced to subsist on bread for a spell.

That's when Dong collected her 19-year-old brother and set off on a journey where they walked some 40 kilometers (25 miles), with luggage in tow, to get home. The trip to a small town southeast of Zhengzhou took almost nine hours.

“Foxconn really messed up, I don't think a lot of people would want to go back. I know I wouldn't,” Dong told Bloomberg News.

In Xi Jinping's China, millions live with the fear of getting caught up in an abrupt lockdown and forced to fend for themselves -- a nightmare scenario that's become more and more common this year as cities from Shanghai to Chengdu grind to a halt to stop the virus. It was no different within Foxconn's vast worker populace, a contingent of some 200,000 forced to share cramped dormitories with up to 11 other people.

Something snapped over the weekend, when hundreds if not thousands of workers walked, hitched rides or dipped into their savings to escape the Covid flareup. Their collective ordeal was captured in videos and photos that flooded social media in China, exposing the toll of Covid